When people think of investing in high quality audio equipment, they think of home theater sound systems, over priced headphones, and car stereos with unnecessarily flashy LCD screens. What people DON’T usually think about is their computer.

I hope that changes in the next few years, because the truth is a lot of people spend more time listening to music on their computers than they do on their iPods. And the reason is simple. We’re online ALL THE TIME. Between email, facebook, and YouTube, people are beginning to spend more time in front of the computer than anywhere else.

And for many of us, we like to listen to tunes while we’re plugging away at the keyboard. But if you care about high quality audio at all, you know those lousy speakers built into your monitor or laptop all but destroy your music. All they do is make the audio recognizable so you can say, “Oh yeah…I (thought I) like this song”.

If you care about the quality of your music, do yourself a favor and pick up a decent set of speakers. You’ll learn to enjoy your music a LOT more. And if you play games, you’ll really appreciate the deeper bass an actual set of speakers will give you.

And no, I’m not a Microsoft rep of any kind. My statement is genuine. The new Microsoft Office 2007 system is truly a superior suite of office programs over anything else on the market and a serious improvement over older versions of Microsoft’s leading software application brand.

Ironically, what sets the 2007 Office system apart from older versions of Microsoft Office is the very thing that people complain about the most: the new Ribbon system - dubbed the “Fluent User Interface.” The only reason I can think of why people complain about the new interface is because most people are afraid of change (except when electing a presidential candidate).

Sure, the system does take some getting used to; but everyone I’ve spoken who was open-minded enough to give it a fair chance quickly realizes its superiority over the File-Edit-Inset menu system. And on top of that, the new Live Preview feature of the Office 2007 system is invaluable. It allows you see formatting changes in real time when text is highlighted and you are scrolling though different fonts, text sizes, colors, effects, etc. The utility of this feature alone is incredible, allowing you to not only save time creating documents, but also to make them look far more professional.

I stumbled upon this question in a popular internet forum I forum I frequent. The thread seemed to attract a lot of attention very quickly. It was already on its 8th page, within just a few minutes of being posted, before I was able to read through it. And I was shocked by what I saw.

I had no idea how many people think the internet is bad for society. Surely, this forum’s participants are unlikely to constitute a representative collection of the American population, but regardless, the ratio was something like 10 to 1. Again, I was absolutely staggered.

I could not feel more differently about the internet. In fact, I think just about the only true harm the internet “causes” is increased fraud and identity theft by criminals. The other negatives the internet poses I believe to be minor and therefore negligible. On the other hand, the benefits of the internet are enormous and so far-reaching that they are boarding immeasurability. The internet allows for better commerce (Amazon, eBay), improved communication (email, IM), and the ability to expose the entire world to information and new ideas (Wikipedia, and blogs like this). To me, these benefits trump any and all negative aspects the internet brings to our lives.

What do you think?

It’s amazing how many self-proclaimed “HD Experts” there are who don’t have the slightest clue as to what high definition is. Pretty much all you see them say is “1080p! 1080p!” while they point proudly to wide-screen Sony’s and Toshiba’s television sets. So, in order to spare you from this highly annoying type of person, allow me to explain to you what HD really is.

“High” has to do with amount, and “Defining” has to do with resolution. So, translated, high definition means high resolution. That’s a bit better of an explanation, but resolution still is a bit unclear. But that’s fine, because resolution is an easy concept to understand. It has to do with the number of pixels that make up the screen. The more pixels your screen has, the more detail it can show in images, and therefore the higher its resolution. And as we just discussed, a high resolution means high definition.

All this 480p, 720i, and 1080P talk is about different resolution standards in the industry. Kind of like different sized shirts: small, medium, and large. The number represents the number of pixels that line up against to each other horizontally across the screen (or the “X-axis”). The higher the number, the more pixels, which means a higher resolution, and therefore higher definition.

Seriously. They are. Have you even used a good quality wireless mouse from a reputable brand? There is absolutely NO noticeable difference in accuracy, speed, or reliability. The only really noticeable difference is that… well…. the wire is missing!

“Yeah, So what?” you might ask. Well, the best thing about a wireless mouse is the amount and degree of freedom it affords you. You can lean back and relax and still adjust your volume. You can lay in your bed and keep control of your DVD functions. And you can even hand it to your friend who’s sitting next to you when he is unsuccessfully trying to verbally to navigate you to a website, and let him take you there himself. Trust me, it’s a lot easier.

And the performance of a good wireless mouse these days meets or even exceeds the performance of a wired USB mouse. And the reason is simple. Wired devices run on frequencies just like wireless devices. Therefore, if your wireless mouse runs at a higher frequency than your wired mouse (which can often be the case) then your wireless mouse will actually have a faster connection to your PC than your wired one.

Pretty cool, isn’t it?